Absorbent articles such as sanitary napkins, pantiliners, tampons, absorbent interlabial devices, disposable diapers, incontinence products, and bandages are designed to absorb and retain liquid and other discharges from the human body and to prevent body and clothing soiling. In the manufacture of absorbent articles, it is generally necessary to bond the components that will form the absorbent article together in order to form the finished product. For example, topsheet materials can be bonded to a secondary layer, for example, a secondary topsheet material, to provide added strength and reinforcement to the topsheet material.
Some web materials, such as low cost soft and silky tactile web materials (for example, for use as topsheet materials), have weak material strength in the cross direction. It has been observed that when typical bonding patterns are used to bond together such web materials, tearing occurs during use between bonding points. While, increasing the number of bonding points bonding the web materials together would decrease the amount of unbounded material that is susceptible to the tearing problem, such an increase would undesirably increase the stiffness of the material, making it less comfortable and less desirable to a consumer using a product having the bonded webs. Thus, there remains a desire and need in the art to develop an article having sufficient bonding between the web materials, particularly when using a low cost web material with weak material strength in the cross direction, so as to prevent tearing of the web material during use, without undesirably increasing the stiffness of the web material.